I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn’t even say anything.
A: what’s your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don’t have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok
And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes
@GravitySpoiled I love this, I had a very similar situation with my sports group, litte questions asked as well! Best thing was the reaction from the leader “I you are kind of right anyways, we should get rid of WhatsApp.”
Problems only appeared later down the line with people complaining that they don’t get notifications and it’s not a habit for them to check it, so they don’t see new messages.Probably they were on the edge already, but it’s good that they have made the switch
What’s wrong with Signal: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/why_not_signal.md
TLDR: Funded by the CIA, centralized in the US and phone numbers make you personally identifiable.
I’m assuming OP didn’t just accept a position with the fucking Hezbollah, so Signal probably fits his usecase
It’ll be fine. If the fucking CIA wanted OP to spill the beans they’ll just send an agent with a wrench directly to OP’s kneecaps.
Yeah if you have nothing to hide, what is the problem with spying?!
Isn’t that the guy who invented Lemmy? Reminds me of TG’s founder doing the same.
For a second I thought you meant you don’t use Signal, so they all went there on purpose to avoid you.
People dont install Signal for me, especially feo groups. They use arguments like “yeah, and I also might have reasons not to use Signal like I do with Whatsapp”
Kinda disrespectful to put a line against a data selling app and comparing it to “nah, I just dont wanna”
To be fair that does take effort
Heck yeah! I got a small work group to use Element instead of slack or discord once. I was so proud of them. Kudos for you.
And i can’t even convince my family…
I convinced my family by telling them I won’t use anything else. Use Signal or don’t talk to me. Win win
They Uno Reversed this on me. “We’re already on Whatsapp, you’re isolating yourself”
This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.
Fuck this one guy in particular.
Wow, congrats.
Signal is so bloated compared to Conversations on Android. Also it’s a walled garden requiring your ph number to register (edit: and requires owning a smart phone👎). Based in the US so not great for privacy. Marginally better than Whatsapp suppose.
Edit: and it requires a smart phone.
Not that I will convince you to use signal, but there are desktop versions as well, so technically not required to use a smart phone.
That requires a phone …
Yes
I use Signal. It’s the in thing in my circles.
The desktop version cannot be used independently; you still need to make and maintain an account on a smart phone. Also the desktop version uses crazy memory. It’s a pos. I no longer use it. Also you’re limited to 2 devices: one phone & one comp. I sync my xmpp chats between 3 or 4, depending.
Signal works across more than two devices.
Well, that’s news to me.
Pray, how do I login to the same account on my second phone? Or do you mean you can link multiple computers to the account on your phone? In which case, I’m not running that on my old laptop.
Edit: I’ll answer my own question:
Multiple mobile devices … are not currently supported.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320551-Linked-Devices
Signal app size 165MB. Conversations: 42MB.
I can’t message someone on Signal without installing Signal or Molly which also uses Signal servers, which has to be trusted on good faith (can’t run my own). Ergo a walled garden just like Whatsapp.
I can’t register with just a username & password. I have to trust their PR saying they don’t store my ph #.
US has some of the worst legislation when it comes to privacy; when the agencies decide they want your data, Signal will not be allowed to tell you. And don’t give me the bs line that they only store 3 pieces of info about you. Unless you’ve built their server software you don’t know what they collect am store.
dream team
What did you do to offend them?
I first read it that way too.
Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.
But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.
Clearly I’m not bitter…😅
What were you using SMS for?
SMS is still the dominant message format in some countries
Doesn’t every phone have an SMS app? What’s the benefit of having SMS in signal?
The benefit is that Signal displaces the default sms app and is also Signal. Rather than having to jump between 2 apps.
Well, they partly took that “feature” away because people thought they were sending encrypted SMS messages which is not true. False sense of security.
They just took the secure high road and ditched SMS. It also made the app leaner with a smaller attack surface.
I think they did the right decision. Signal is the secure choice for the masses.
Having said that, I’m using Molly-Foss as it has less footprints, no Google messaging framework, leaner than Signal, with no crypto payment, and an encrypted database at rest.
the core benefit was in adoption. it was easy to get parents, for example, saying that they jist have to bother with one app for all of their messaging.
the minute they have to contend with sms and signal, they don’t mind adding whatsapp in the mix as well.
Conversely, they do mind having multiple apps and only send sms
Not having to guess which app has the person you’d like to contact.
Sms is also not secure, kinda not what signal is…
Signal started out as textsecure, an sms/mms app that encrypted your text messages. It quietly started sending messages over its server at one point after an update, but before that sms is what it was about.
But you are already on Signal.
Also I live Inna country where SMS is very common
Why did they remove SMS support?
They expected to get a marginal number of additional users from vendor lock-in of existing Signal users
Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.
If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.
https://www.howtogeek.com/787957/why-sms-needs-to-die/
SMS is bad, and on the way out. Besides that, I barely noticed when Signal stopped allowing SMS.
I guess in some circles it matters, but seems like most people use messengers nowadays.
Which is a BS argument because the app was VERY clear about it
I think you underestimate how oblivious many users are when it comes to using software.
Honestly that was the initial appeal. Grandma didn’t notice or care that the old SMS app was hidden & just thought there was an update. That ignorance meant she was talking in an encrypted fashion where possible even if accidentally. And since you will need a SMS app anyhow for OTP & other one-off notifications, might as well have it all in one spot. The fact it is different is probably more confusing to some users.
And without that appeal, the missing server code history, the US government funding, centralized service, the requirement of a SIM card (which many places now require ID to get so they can register you in a database), as well as the requirement of bowing to the mobile duopoly (can’t use the service if you have a KaiOS, Linux, or other phone—or without a phone), I don’t know there is much of an appeal. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t gotten my family on it since I would love to ditch Android.
That just feels like shooting themselves in the foot. Just inform the user SMS isn’t secure. That’s it.
Not being willing to trust the user with the information so they can make a choice is asinine. It’s the same reason why I stopped using Tuta. Complete privacy and security are great but if there’s no option to make things a little more open for the sake of convenience or interconnectivity, I’m just not interested.
Security and privacy shouldn’t be a prison.
You can’t target UX to the average person. It won’t work for most people. You need to target those that struggle with technology the most to make it accessible.
Signals main unique selling point is its security, not its ease of use. If people fall into useing signal in a insecure way, it can be hard to say signal is a secure messaging app. As many people may be using it insecurely.
I guess what I want now is a client for both protocols that works like the old app. That would cater to me - I don’t remember which person is on which app so I keep ending up on SMS because it has everyone.
Yup
I totally agree. And to make matters worse, one of their arguments was that supporting SMS was taking resources away from developing other features. But what mind blowing features have come out since they dropped SMS? Usernames, I guess, which they were working on anyway. New app icons…
Now tell them you just switched to matrix and see if they’ll follow
Matrix can be pretty unstable at times
I like Mattermost but it isn’t federated
I don’t have to. Matrix is coming anyway. It’s not an if but a when.
For official (internal) company communication though I will advertise matrix instead of signal. I’ll report back once I’ve talked to the right people about it.
Never abuse kind people. That’s what breaks them.
Its a joke if that wasn’t obvious.
Why don’t you use WhatsApp?
Because it’s proprietary garbage. If there are FOSS alternatives, I’m most definitely going to use them instead of proprietary software, let alone proprietary software by companies like Meta. And since there are plenty of those alternatives: No WhatsApp for me.
Meta owns it, and meta is one of the large, evil tech corps.
They are probably the easiest one for most people from English-speaking countries to cut from their lives.
I work in cyber security and this is dogshit.
Most of it debunked thanks to the EU also.
Well, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. They are a large player, so they are under a bunch of scrutiny.
But at the end of the day, WhatsApp clearly states it takes all this information. They only claim to keep your messages end-to-end encrypted.
I wonder if this applies to text messages only, or to things like voice memos, images/videos, gifs, etc. as well.
WhatsApp doesn’t let you send documents if you don’t give it full access to your files. Sure, maybe they pinky-promise don’t do anything but this is Facebook we’re talking about.
The same caveat goes for photos and videos - you can’t even send a photo if you don’t give it the camera permission and gallery access, something it clearly doesn’t need just to send a single picture.
Additionally, WhatsApp loads previews of websites. Sure, on the privacy violations list that’s pretty low-priority but I’d still like to not have a link contacted before I can take my 3 seconds to look at it and decide wether it’s worth clicking. Especially since a lot of my contacts send obvious scams (“send this message to 10 contacts for a chance to win a free iPhone” type bullshit mostly).
Revoking WhatsApp’s contacts permission will not show peoples’ nicknames - it will only ahow numbers. Yet you have to give yourself a nickname on WhatsApp, so they clearly have some interest in your contacts. Otherwise they wouldn’t block it outright when it’s an already implemented feature to show nicknames for numbers not in the contact list.
All quite suspicious if you ask me. Although I don’t work in cyber security so it’s clearly just incoherent rambing from me.
You must be lost
Nope just well informed and educated, not a shrieking pearl clutcher “cUz fAsEbuK”
Lol
